Food glorious food! – Page 4

A sugar sachet ritual

January 13, 2011

Whenever I’m out at a cafe I always fold my sugar wrappers up into one sachet.

This habit probably formed when I added three, sometimes four, sugars to my coffee. I was trying to hide how many I’d actually added, not wanting to look like such a shocking sweet tooth to those around.

While I’ve now cut back my sugar intake in coffee after a health kick last year, I still fold the slide the tops and extra wrappers into one. It’s a habit, but after waiting on tables and having to clear away little coffee soaked wrappers, it’s also a thoughtful gesture for whoever is clearing your table.

Catch of the Day: Atlantic salmon

January 9, 2011

The restaurant where I work doesn’t have specials. The only items subject to change on any given day are the house dips and the catch of the day.

The other day a repeat customer came in and asked after the catch of the day, the Atlantic salmon. He first asked if it was local, which was easy to answer given our inland location.

He then asked where it came from. Having been a member of Slow Food I understand the importance of food provenance and also eating regionally and seasonally. Now I’m not a fish or seafood expert by any means, but I told him that I assumed it would be Australian and most likely from Tasmania.

The next question was whether it was wild, and I responded that I thought it would be farmed. You see I’ve met people from Tasmania who are involved in aquaculture and fish farming. Plus on one holiday there, I saw the fish farms from a distance.

I offered to check with the chef, which the customer then asked me to do. Unfortunately I didn’t get a particularly forthcoming answer from the chefs. They said “Well where is the Atlantic?”. I pride myself on my geography, so I know that it is the ocean between the Americas and Europe and Africa.

So I went back to the customer, explained the geography lesson I’d received from the kitchen and he was appeased. It was as though he knew that all along and was testing me. I must say I felt a little foolish. But now I just feel foolish because my research shows that I was right in the first place.

Salmon was first introduced to Australia in the 1800s, with eggs arriving on sailing ships, for sport fishing, though it wasn’t particularly successful. Then in the 1960s, eggs from Canada were brought in to the Snowy River Mountain Hydroelectric Scheme lakes, however it was too warm for them to establish a colony.

Tasmania has been farming salmon, Atlantic salmon, since the mid 1980s. Though it may be an introduced species, just because its name is reminiscent of its origin doesn’t mean that’s where the only ones come from. It is not as specific to one region as Parma ham or Champagne.

So eat Atlantic salmon and know that it’s Australian, farmed and good for you.

I found my information about how Sammy the Atlantic Salmon found his way to Australia on these websites:

http://www.australian-aquacultureportal.com/industrygroups/salmon.html

http://www.tasmaniansalmon.com.au/consumer/about/history.html

Apparently emus like mulberries

January 2, 2011

New Year’s Day 2011 was spent on the amazing, flooded Murray River with my family in what is something of an annual event, a boat trip to pick mulberries.

Two ancient mulberry trees planted circa 1850s on an old homestead, are the only things beside a grave to remain from that time. Somehow these stooped trees managed to survive the drought to produce a crop of dark purple berries.

We’ve been coming to these mulberry trees since the mid 80s when my dad, uncle and grandfather built a modern day paddlesteamer. It’s been a pleasant and productive family outing ever since. This year the numbers dwindled to just Mum, Dad, Bro #1, Friday Night Dad and some of Bro #1’s friends, but that just meant more mulberries for me.

I love the amazing feeling of tradition that comes with eating mulberries. There is nothing better than sitting in the higher branches, container in one hand and the other red stained hand transferring warm, ripe mulberries from tree to mouth. I would always be chastised for eating more than ended up in the container, but I guess I paid for that whenever I accidentally ate one of the ants that also loved mulberries.

This year, our biggest competition was the emus. I never knew that emus liked mulberries, but it turns out that they do, even when they give them purple seeded diarrhea. As we walked over the hill, the dogs started barking and running towards the two trees, flushing out three emus in the process. At least emus can’t fly, so there were still some berries left for us. Emus are also discerning mulberry eaters and wait for them to ripen before pilfering.

Whilst gravity is increasingly against me, I did relive some childhood moments as I climbed up a branch or two. It wasn’t easy going and my clumsy adult body almost pitched through the web of a giant orb spider. Then I was too scared of both the enormous spider and falling out of the tree that I hardly any picked mulberries from that vantage point.

Back at the boat we cleaned up. I had brought along some disposable rubber gloves to keep my hands stain free, but if you don’t have gloves when picking mulberries, just rub some green mulberries on the blood red stains on your hands and clothes and they will miraculously disappear!

In the end we managed to get five containers of mulberries, meaning plenty to have with ice cream for dessert, which is my second favourite way to eat them, right after straight from the tree.

Brunch, my favourite meal to eat out

December 28, 2010

I love the languorous nature of brunch. It starts with a sleep in and (usually) unhurried getting ready time. Then there is the soul rejuvenating coffee, the eggs and bacon or pancakes and most importantly, the excellent company of good friends.

Brunch always seems to be the most gossipy of shared meals. You can debrief the events of a big night, each person recalling different details and plots. You find out what people are up to in a bulletin that beats any newspaper or Twitter feed. Afterwards, there is a whole afternoon that can be filled with activity: shopping, more coffee, checking out an art gallery, seeing a movie or just aimless wander. It’s quite spontaneous.

Today I had a two-hour brunch with my friends KP and Galleria*. It’s been awhile since our last brunch, as KP has moved away and only Galleria remains on the arts board we all served on. At our last brunch, we all arrived wearing the same shade of green, which was a rather coordinated fluke that earned a paying out from Mario the owner. The strict instructions were not to wear green, so I thought I would be safe in a grey tank top with a print on it. However both girls turned up in shades of grey, so we managed to pull off our fluke for the second time running, though this time it wasn’t as obvious. I should have gotten a photo, but we were too busy chatting to pause for a “cheese!”.

So instead, here’s our no-it’s-not-St Patrick’s Day brunch pic instead.

We chatted about all the important things in the world:

Christmas and the exchanging of gifts
Plans for new years
Plans for 2011
Small-town gossip
Animal Kingdom (the movie) and assorted TV programs
Family and the mixed bag of love and hate that comes with it
Work – the good, the bad and the blah
Oprah’s visit to Australia
My farewell party(s)
Do they think I’ll come back with an American accent (the response was “no, but you’d better not”)

And surprisingly there was hardly any talk of any boys. There just wasn’t time between all that, my two coffees and Moroccan eggs. I heart brunch.

*She may be of Italian descent, but her real name doesn’t translate to Gallery.

There’s gotta be a pavlova here somewhere

December 25, 2010

One of the recent themes on my Facebook and Twitter updates is that of making pavlova.

I have taken on the humble pav as my dessert specialty. I take them to barbecues, dinner parties, family gatherings and am about to start making them for friends just because they love them and heap praise upon my abilities to make a great pav.

Pavlova is an antipodean cultural phenomenon that was created in honour of the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova whilst she toured the region.

There is much conjecture as to whether it is an Australian or New Zealand invention, so I don’t want to turn up the oven heat on this and will say that both countries regard the pav as a cultural icon. Read more about the fascinating history of the pavlova on one of my favourite educative sites, Wikipedia.

I believe the pavlova is making a comeback. Once alongside the old Savoy biscuits with kabana and cheddar cheese or the coloured pickled onion on a toothpick in the party food category, it is making a retro comeback – a well deserved retro comeback that I’m helping along.

Take last Sunday for example. I rocked up to a party at a friends house with a guest list oozing with foodies and my pav decorated with blackberries and kiwifruit. I had no less than five people remark on the pavlova and how it rocked their world in that moment.

About three years ago, I had never made a pav. My aunt had given me her mother-in-law’s recipe in a book years before, but I’d always put it in the too hard category. I was afraid of failing. Until one day, I was so desperate for a pav, that I opened it up and made my very first pavlova. It wasn’t a bad effort, but it was mostly crusty meringue and not the marshmallowy inside that makes a truly great pav. So the next time I adjusted it slightly, and I’ve been making them ever since. They are super easy to make but just require some intensive output from the beaters.

So I’m making a pav today for the family Christmas lunch, making it with love and sitting back to watch the pavlova’s resurgence to the dinner table.

a little cameo

Category: Food glorious food!